As a "nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization," the National Center for Policy Analysis produced a policy paper in December of 2012 that reaffirmed its "nonpartisan" credibility as it arrived at a very simple, and the only conceivable, solution to the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA's) problems administering disabilities claims: the "profit-motive." That is, of course, an inescapable conclusion at which any nonpartisan organization should arrive, especially if it received $620,000 in grants from the Koch Family Foundations between 1997 and 2011. To what other nonpartisan solution to a government challenge could an organization arrive? Let's see how the evidence supporting such a foregone conclusion stacks up. Or not.
Most of the data cited in the report are consistent with what one can glean from VA's own self-assessment documents or from media outlets accessible via a simple "Google" search. So, yes, nearly 900,000 veterans disability claims make up the backlog; an error rate of 36 percent on claims falls far short of the 98 percent accuracy rate that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) hopes to meet in 2015; increased claims for compensation for PTSD- and Agent Orange-exposure-related disabilities have added volume and complexity to claims over the last decade; and inadequate training for disability raters, antiquated information processing, and lack of coordination between stakeholders have led to what many would agree is a crisis situation for veterans. DKos Military Veterans and Military Community Members of Daily Kos have discussed these data and their impacts on this site and elsewhere, especially those of us who have had occasion to work directly with veterans in our communities.
Where might be a parting of the ways between progressives and NCPA is on how to fix what is broken at VA?
For NCPA, its "money shot" appears in the report's last few paragraphs--which reveal its actual purpose, to contract out more services, and federal agency functions, ultimately. The magic bullet of the marketplace provides the answer:
The system’s administrative services for disability are disjointed and inefficient. This is no surprise since there is a severe lack of profit motive or competing entities from which veterans can receive federally funded disability benefits. Private contracting of administrative services should be considered (p. 11).
Because if you can't make a profit off the veterans, as you did on the war itself, what good is it, right? And how do we prove that privatization of federal programs works? By mentioning the GI Bill after World War II as an example, of course.
When Congress created the GI Bill following WWII, it permitted veterans to choose the type of college or vocational school they wanted to attend. Colleges are better for the competition the GI Bill created, and veterans received a quality education, exercising the same choices available to other citizens.
Of course, the GI Bill was always and continues to be administered by the federal government, but let's not mention that. Let's also not mention that the success of the GI Bill has involved collaboration, between the federal government, veterans, and colleges, universities and vocational schools, not demonizing federal agencies and administrators, disingenuously claiming common cause with veterans for their desire for access to higher education, and then offering some magic marketplace fix for any and all administrative challenges to the program.
Oh, yes, and what else will contribute to the ultimate success of a privatized VA disabilities compensation system? Get rid of those pesky regulations that might otherwise hamstring those motivated by profit to ensure the system's success. For as we all know
In 1955, President Eisenhower signed legislation that required the federal government to rely on the private sector to provide goods and services whenever possible. The premise was that the private sector should supply goods and services to the public sector where practical and appropriate. But subsequent amendments to the legislation diluted much of the potential cost savings.
Is it possible that some of that legislation also helped to regulate corporate excess in pursuing its "profit motive"? Moreover,
in the mid-1980s, the Department of Defense contracted out a variety of functions which saved an estimated $613 million annually. Unfortunately, over the years, more exemptions were permitted that diminished the role of the private sector.
This has led to the unfortunate situation in which
By 2003, circumstances under which government performance of a commercial function may be permitted included, “certain war fighting, judicial, enforcement, regulatory, policymaking functions,” among other things.
Of course, we've seen how perfectly unbridled capitalism has worked for the U.S. in these areas, especially in its war fighting functions. No waste, no fraud, no debt there. Not only is there no specific accounting in the report as to where this $613 million savings occurred during the 80s, nor whether it was obscenely offset by similar hundreds of millions in wasted funds, but the straight-faced assertion that privatization was somehow a boon and not a boondogle during the conduct of the last two wars reveals just how reality-challenged NCPA's "researchers" truly must be. Or perhaps how reality-challenged NCPA thinks the rest of us are.
A major omission from the report is, apart from its singular mention of DOD, how possible coordintation with DOD appears to have no place in a process of administering health care and other benefits to veterans. Servicemembers are in the "care" of their respective services (and not VA) until they separate from Active Duty, so doesn't it stand to reason that DOD would be preparing servicemembers for transition to veteran status while they are still serving, that DOD technical systems (especially medical ones) should be ready and able to "talk" to VA systems? The report carefully (or carelessly) omits such bothersome details.
In the end I experience an unceasing sense of wonder at how sacrifice-averse conservatives manage to avoid either military service or service in combat zones, support pusuit of wars as long as others bear the sacrifices, claim to support servicemembers and veterans during the process of committing the nation to war and keeping it going while it remains profitable, criticize "big government" when it comes to how care for servicemembers and veterans proceeds when the wars end, and then offer a profiteer's take on how to better care for those they committed to combat in the first place. In part, I am encouraged that such shoddy and insincere "research" passes for "expert" at an organization whose Web site boasts giddy endorsements from the likes of Phil Gramm, Tommy Thompson, and Newt Gingrich. Chickenhawks, all three, their support for NCPA shouldn't win too many veterans over. What is discouraging is that many current policymakers probably consider NCPA to be as expert as the organization claims itself to be.